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Monday, February 22, 2016

Who Won the Latino Vote in Nevada ?

Who Won the Nevada Latino Vote?

Latinos Reached a Record Share of Nevada Democratic Caucuses

(Los Angeles, Feb 22) After hearing about disputes between the Sanders and Clinton over the Edison Entry Poll Survey results on the Latino vote in the Feb 20 Primary Caucuses WCVI undertook a review of the publicly disclosed data.

WCVI concludes that the survey results are statistically consistent with the margin of victory of Hillary Clinton on Feb 20. The main dispute among pundits and between campaigns has been the assertion that it is statistically impossible for Hillary Clinton to narrowly lose the Latino vote (45% to 53% with Latinos representing 19% of the voters) and narrowly lose Whites (47% to 49% with Whites representing 59% of the voters) and still win the election by 5.3%.

However WCVI concludes the Clinton margin of victory is adequately explained by the large margin of victory Secretary Clinton won among African American voters (77% to 23% with AA's representing 13% of the voters).

Simply put there is no relevant statistical inconsistency between Edison's Entry Poll results for Latinos, Whites, and Blacks and the overall election results. Based on this fact WCVI concludes that there is no statistical basis to question the Latino vote breakdown between Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders.

We note that some analysts have said that Secretary Clinton's victories in heavily Latino precincts proved that she won the Latino vote. However the methodology of using heavily Latino or "barrio" precincts to represent Latino voting behavior has been considered ineffective and discarded for more than 30 years due to non-barrio residential patterns been common among Latino voters since the 1980's.

Lost is this controversy is the fact that the data shows a record high Latino vote share in the Democratic Caucuses with Latinos representing 19% of the vote compared to 13% in 2008.

WCVI is a non-profit, non-partisan Latino public policy and research organization founded in 1985 with offices in Los Angeles and San Antonio.